Chinese Takeout
by ncfan
Summary: How to express something and still not be understood.


**Characters: **Orihime, Ishida, with mentions of others.**  
Pairings: **very small IshiHime, visible only if you squint, and is—as is the case with many of my oneshots—open to interpretation.**  
Timeline: **Set during the Arrancar Arc. I don't really know how to get any more specific than that, except that it's after Chapter 228.**  
Author's Note: **There are a couple of random questions in here, courtesy of Orihime, master subject-hopper.**  
Disclaimer:** I don't own Bleach.

* * *

The sunlight started to shy away when the evening came, in shades of stained gold and russet orange. It had rained lightly earlier that day, but had since cleared up, leaving puddles on the side of the road and a slight humidity in the air, heavy but not uncomfortable.

Pale plaster gleamed in the weakening sunlight, smooth and white. Orihime stared up at the building with its many windows. The complex had four floors, and was constructed in such a way as to resemble a highway hotel (and Orihime could guess that it had once been a hotel), with a stairwell on the side and pathways on each floor, with iron railings. She wondered if this was the right apartment complex, or if Urahara-san had just sent her on a wild goose chase. In honesty, she wouldn't have put that past him.

Just as the thought went through her mind, a door on the ground floor creaked open.

"Ishida-kun!" Orihime exclaimed, smiling brightly as she waved to get his attention, before stepping under the outcropping of the above path besides him.

Ishida looked tired and drained, his face slightly paler than usual. He stood unusually straight and stiff, as though ill at ease with his surroundings. His eyes kept shifting from the plaster outcropping to the concrete sidewalk that separated path from parking lot, anywhere but on her, Orihime noticed.

"Hello, Inoue-san," he said finally, head bobbing slightly. "Um, I'm going to go ahead and ask. How do you know where I live?" Ishida asked, half suspicious, half in a tone that indicated that he didn't really want to know.

Orihime smiled brightly. "I asked Urahara-san if he knew where you lived, since Urahara-san seems to know a great deal about everything in Karakura Town. He directed me here." Her smile became a bit apologetic as Orihime came to the realization that she may have interrupted Ishida as he was about to do something. "I can come back later, if you're busy."

"That's alright," Ishida quickly muttered. "I was just stepping out for a bit of fresh air," he explained, pointing towards the plain door of his apartment.

That was when Orihime noticed the swath of bandages covering Ishida's right arm, from the elbow to the wrist.

"Ishida-kun!" she gasped, concerned. "What happened to your arm?"

Ishida immediately tucked his right arm out of sight behind his back; given how slight he was, that didn't work very well, and his bony elbow still poked out from behind his back. "It's nothing," he explained too quickly. "I had an accident, is all. I'm not all that badly hurt."

"Do you want me to—"

"I'm alright, Inoue-san," Ishida asserted firmly, his face going tight for a moment. "It's just a few scratches." How stiffly he moved his arm indicated that it may have been a bit more serious than that, but Orihime relented and fell silent.

There was an awkward silence. Ishida was by nature a taciturn person, and Orihime had always been at a loss for intelligible words around him, even more so than Ichigo, just because Ishida was capable of being incredibly off-putting, without even trying.

Ishida nodded towards the door of his apartment, clearly uncomfortable, even as he softened out a little. "Do you want to go inside?" he asked quietly. "Are you hungry at all? I was just about to get something to eat for supper, anyway."

It was seven o'clock. The last time Orihime had eaten was seven and a half hours ago at lunch. She would have been lying if she tried to say she wasn't hungry. "Supper sounds nice," Orihime admitted, rubbing the nape of her neck ruefully. "But if I'm imposing, I can always leave."

"No!" Ishida's face colored out of embarrassment at that sudden outburst, and he added, more composedly, "It'll be nice, not eating alone for a change." He dug a key out of his pocket and unlocked his front door. "Come on in."

The apartment Ishida lived in was slightly larger than the one Orihime lived in nearly all the way across town, and just as sparsely furnished.

"The tenants upstairs are pretty noisy," Ishida called from the small kitchen as Orihime wandered into the living area, "but they're usually out late on Friday nights so there should be at least a modicum of quiet until about one tomorrow morning."

Orihime nodded absently, half-hearing his words. The living room was small too, like the kitchen, which was separated from the living room and the hall leading to two closed doors by a low wall that only came up a few inches beneath Orihime's shoulders. There was no television set, just a futon couch pressed up against the wall and a three-tiered bookcase against another wall.

Orihime quietly walked to the wooden bookcase. Sitting alone on the smooth, flat top of the bookcase was a 3 ½- by 5-inch picture in a frame. Orihime plucked the frame up in her hands and stared at it. The picture was of a woman wearing white; she seemed relatively young to Orihime's eyes, probably in her twenties, with coal-black hair, fair skin and blue eyes. The picture itself was slightly faded, at least twenty years old. _This must be Ishida-kun's mother_, Orihime decided, putting the frame down gently.

"I'm sorry." Ishida's voice floated from the kitchen. "The only thing I have in the refrigerator right now is last night's takeout and some Diet Coke. Is that alright?"

"Sure." Orihime turned towards him and smiled. "You know I'll eat just about anything."

Ishida looked slightly disturbed. "Yes," he murmured jerkily. "…I do know that about you, Inoue-san." Orihime giggled once he turned his back; Ishida probably wouldn't have appreciated being laughed at to his face.

He drew out a few boxes that bore the logo of the Chinese restaurant near the apartment complex from the refrigerator and onto the square-shaped kitchen table as he looked through the boxes. "There's plenty here for both of us," he decided, before scraping some of the food—teriyaki chicken and large quantities of fried rice—onto two plates and sticking them into the microwave.

Orihime frowned as they waited for the food to finish warming up. As far as she knew, Ishida's father was still alive. Why didn't he live with him? After a moment, Orihime decided not to ask. She had learned to leave some questions unasked, and got the feeling that that one might be one that was better left unsaid.

Leftovers, Orihime decided, were never quite as good as when the food was still fresh, but Chinese leftovers were perfectly passable no matter what state they were in, so long as they weren't going bad or molding.

"You haven't been in school lately," Orihime remarked hesitantly, instinctively knowing she was treading on sensitive ground.

Ishida tensed slightly, staring pensively down at the plate of fried rice and teriyaki chicken with his brow drawn—a homely meal and they both knew it, but made better by the fact that they didn't have to eat it alone. "I've had things I had to take care of," he answered vaguely, cagily avoiding her eyes as though he was under the impression Orihime would read his thoughts if they made eye contact.

The warm, sweet taste of the chicken filled Orihime's mouth as she bit her lip momentarily. "I wish you had told one of us, then. We've all been worried."

A pregnant pause followed, in which Ishida seemed to hold his breath before letting out an exhalation of words. "I'm…sorry, Inoue-san," he muttered, glasses glinting around the edges. As grudging as the words were, Orihime could tell they were totally genuine. "It couldn't be helped."

Orihime let the subject drop and took a sip of her Diet Coke, the carbonated liquid stinging her throat going down.

Ishida wasn't much more of a talker at a kitchen table than he was anywhere else. Orihime hadn't expected much in the way of conversation out of him, but she also hadn't expected total silence on her friend's part. Then again, Ishida had implied that he was used to eating alone, and he certainly wasn't the sort to talk to himself so silence was probably an integral part of his routine.

Finally, Orihime drew up the courage to speak again. "Ishida-kun, can I ask you something?"

He tilted his head slightly, long bangs brushing against his eyes. "I don't see why not."

Orihime nodded, putting her eating utensils down on the table. "Do you ever feel like something awful's going to happen, something really, really bad, but you just feel so, so, _useless_—" Orihime spat out the word bitterly "—that all you can do is watch and wait blindly for whatever is going to happen to happen?" The question was angry, bitter, completely unlike Orihime but she was glad she could finally say it.

Ishida frowned, peering at her with his blue eyes narrowed. "What brought this on?"

Orihime shook her head vigorously. "Something's about to happen, I know it is. But everyone I've gotten to talk to me besides Kuchiki-san doesn't want me to do anything." Ishida's face momentarily became strained at the mention of Rukia's name, but the flicker passed so quickly that Orihime convinced herself that she had merely been seeing things. "No one will tell me what's going on. Everyone just wants me to run and hide, and I just want to help them. But since they won't tell me what's going on, I haven't got a clue what's about to happen. I feel like I'm standing in a dark room; somewhere, there's someone else, and that person has a gun. I don't know where the bullet will come from; I just know it's coming, and I can't do anything but wait."

The sound of footsteps overhead indicated that someone on the second floor was home. Ishida's eyes briefly shot up to the ceiling where the sound came from before focusing his attention back on Orihime. "…We all have that feeling, Inoue-san. An attack could come any day now." A slight sympathetic gleam came into his eyes. "And you're not the only one being locked out of the loop. I don't really know what's going on, either."

As ever, cagey and standoffish, guarded almost to the point of submerging his personality, but as ever Orihime could catch some hints of Ishida's true, inner feelings on the matter beneath the stoicism. A frustration, borne from feelings of ignorance and helplessness.

"I just…feel so useless," Orihime admitted, voice terribly quiet as she stared down pensively at warmed-up rice. "Like I can't do anything at all."

Ishida couldn't find anything to say to that.

They ate on in silence after that, and Orihime was soon done with her meal.

"Are you alright on your own?" Even though he had to know the answer to that, Orihime supposed Ishida felt it obligatory to ask, as he unlocked the door and pushed it open for her.

Orihime smiled mock-cheerfully as she stepped out onto the sidewalk. The sky was gone from its warm shades and instead displayed deep cerulean blue and wine violet. The sickle moon's outline was becoming more well-defined. "I'll be fine. I'll just catch a bus or something to get back home. Will you be at school tomorrow?"

He looked away, towards the ground to his left. "I'm not sure. I hope so."

She fidgeted with her skirt. "Alright, then. I'll see you later."

"Yeah." Ishida nodded distractedly. As Orihime started to walk off down the parking lot, shoes making slight clicking sounds against the asphalt, Ishida called out, "Inoue-san?"

Orihime turned around. Ishida had a strange look on his face, not blank but struggling to be. "I never thought you were useless."

Her face broke into a warm, legitimate smile. "Thank you."

Ishida nodded slightly, keeping his eyes away from her gaze as he shut the door behind him.


End file.
